Evil with a Smiling Face, Part 2

When my friend expressed such enthusiasm for The Sopranos, I determined that I needed to see what the fuss was all about. I’d heard about the series for so long, that my interest was already piqued. So, my wife and I began to watch the first series.

I’m not prepared to comment beyond this: How is it that a man so evil – he takes time out from taking his high school daughter to visit colleges in order to murder someone – can be so human? Tony Soprano is presented as a compelling human figure who struggles in his marriage, who loves his kids, and who loves ducks and flowers. The other side of him is a man who thinks nothing of having men killed, or doing it himself, if not beating them to a pulp.

Can both an outward humanity mask an inner evil? Can Evil have a smiling face?

I was questioning the reality of that, wondering if what Tony Soprano was would ever exist in reality, when I came in my reading of Truman to the Potsdam conference in 1945 between Harry Truman (good guy), Winston Churchill (good guy), and Joseph Stalin (not good guy). Stalin was the head of a police state which, when the dust settled, was ultimately responsible with the deaths of more people, way more people, than Hitler’s six million Jews. And yet, people liked him.

Truman upon meeting him liked him. McCullough says, “Stalin nearly always made a good impression on foreigners.” One of Truman’s associates said, “He is a very likable person.” An American ambassador to Russia at the time said that “Stalin was uncommonly wise and gentle. ‘A child would like to sit on his lap and a dog would sidle up to him.'” (page 418)

So, perhaps Tony Soprano is not such an aberration as I might have wanted to make him.